§alternative analysis includes
make-or-buy decisions, different tools, different skills, etc.

§Activity Resource Requirements may
include the basis of estimation

Estimate Activity
Durations

§consults SME (subject matter experts,
i.e. the one carrying out the actual work) to come with with the estimation,
not on the PM’s own

§AnalogousEstimating:
based on previous activity with similar nature (a form ofexpert judgement), used whenlittle is knownor very similar scope, works well when
project is small, NOT ACCURATE

§ParametricEstimating:
based on some parameters, e.g. the time for producing 1000 component based on
that for 1 component * 1000, use an algorithm based on historical data,
accuracy depends on the parameters selected, can be used on [a portion of / the
entire] project

§One-PointEstimating: based on
expert judgement, but highly unreliable

§Critical
Chain Method (CCM)–
deal with scarce resources and uncertainties, keep the resources levelly loaded
by chaining all activities and grouping the contingency and put at the end asproject buffer, for activities
running in parallel, the contingency is calledfeeding buffer(expect 50% of activities
to overrun)

§Buffer is determined by assessing the
amount of uncertainties, human factors, etc.

§Parkinson’s
Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for
its completion.

§Resource Optimization Techniques

§Resource
levelingis
used to adjust the variation in resource loading to stabilize the number of
resources working each time and to avoid burnout, may need to extend the
schedule in CPM

§Resource
smoothingis
to adjust resource requirements so as not to exceed predetermined resource
limits, but onlyoptimized within the floatboundaries

§Monte
Carlo: run thousand of times to obtain the distribution using a
set of random variables (stochasticvariables),
use a combination of PERT estimate andtriangular distributionsas end point estimates to create the
model to eliminate schedule risks,the graph is a ‘S’ curve